Video Poker Strategy

What Is Video Poker?

Video poker deals you five cards, lets you choose what to hold and draw, and pays based on your final hand - a full-pay Jacks or Better machine can return 99.54% with optimal play, unlike anything on a slot reel.

How to Play Jacks or Better

Jacks or Better pays on a pair of jacks or higher and nothing below it - on a full-pay 9/6 machine with optimal strategy it returns 99.54%, a 0.46% house edge that's among the lowest in any casino.

Reading Paytables

The paytable printed on the machine sets your theoretical return before you touch a card - a 9/6 Jacks or Better machine returns 99.54%, while an identical-looking 8/5 version costs you over two percentage points more.

Strategy Charts Explained

A strategy chart ranks every possible hold decision by expected value, turning video poker from guesswork into exhaustive combinatorial math - playing by instinct instead of by chart typically costs 2% or more of return.

Deuces Wild Strategy

Deuces Wild makes all four 2s wild and completely rewrites the paytable - full-pay "NSU" Deuces Wild returns 100.76% with perfect strategy, one of the few genuinely positive-expectation games on a casino floor.

Video Poker vs Slots

Video poker's theoretical ceiling runs well above typical slot returns - 99.5%+ versus 88-96% - but only if you play every hand with strategy-chart decisions; slots pay their published number no matter what you do.

Crypto Video Poker Fairness

Licensed crypto video poker runs on the same GLI-19-certified RNG software as any licensed casino - the paytable's house edge is unaffected either way, and an optional provably fair layer lets you verify a specific hand yourself.

Video Poker Myths Debunked

No machine gets hot or cold, no royal flush is ever "due," and no betting system beats a fixed paytable - every hand comes from an independent RNG with no memory of what came before.